30 June 2017

Quote of the day

Yeah, but no, but maybe yeah eventually, but no right now. To paraphrase Little Britain’s gormless teenager Vicky Pollard, that’s roughly where the government stands, at the time of writing, on whether public sector workers are going to get a decent pay rise. Although by the time you read this, who knows?

Hours after suggesting on Wednesday that “we understand people are weary” of austerity and that the cap on public sector pay might thus be lifted, Downing Street was backtracking, squeaking furiously that actually nothing had changed. Yet all the time, Tory MPs were getting fat hints that, so long as they voted down a Labour amendment to the Queen’s speech which called for the scrapping of the cap right now, something might well be worked out come the autumn budget.